I was an early adopter of gmail, back in college when it was invite-only and I was young and nerdy. At the time it made total sense to quickly snag my name as an email address since I was looking forward to a distant time when I would be putting it on a resume and putting “cheeriosxxx@example.com” just didn’t feel particularly professional. (Yes, there’s a reason I went by a brand of cereal, no, it’s not particularly profound, yes, if you address me by “cheers” I will still probably answer to it!

I don’t even know whats on my mind this evening, so this might be a bit of a potpourri post. I’m stressed about deadlines, I don’t actually like the noise they make as they go whooshing by. I’m horribly addicted to a video game about farming and buying peoples love. I’m second-hand sad because a friend had to say good bye to one of his furry family members today. I am trying to stay self-aware about my current and likely future condition so that I can keep things from getting away from me.

I just got home from what I believe was my first Oscars viewing party. I’m a little tired, a little wired, and looking forward to settling into a bit more digital farming for the evening and maybe eating the last piece of pizza in the fridge. This kind of movie-centric gathering is not something that I usually do, since I have am pretty unadventurous when it comes to movies. They’re supposed to make you feel and engage, but sometimes it’s too much; Who would choose to feel overwhelmingly sad, or scared, or angry?

Today was a break from everything, after a stressful week, and as a way to psych myself up for stepping outside my comfort zone tomorrow. Taking care of myself is hard and sometimes it means having a silly day watching Supergirl and knitting. I finished some color work that’s been “hanging” over my head, had a milkshake, and played pretend-farming. It was really good. Tomorrow, I’ll go spend time with people, eat snacks, watch famous people wear impractical clothing, and hopefully have fun.

I have a couple of friends who sew as a hobby. They’re both always sharing cool things they’ve made for themselves, playing with fun and creative colors, and making and modifying really individual pieces of clothing. I’ve been fascinated by their skills but pretty comfortable with not joining them in picking up another hobby that requires storing textiles, having multiple pieces of hardware, and a table upon which to place them.

Sometimes I really hate my brain. Today, as a totally random example, has been utterly awful. I woke up out of a nightmare half an hour before my alarm, spent the next 20 minutes fishing around for someone to distract me so I would make sure I didn’t fall back asleep (and resume being pursued by a creepy monster while stringing multiple men along romantically and trying not to miss a ferry) and the next hour trying to persuade myself to start my day.

Today Girl Scout cookies arrived at my office, care of one of my co-workers’ daughter. Every year I make sure to get cookies from at least two girls, more if I can stand to bring that many more cookies into the house. My husband has a serious addiction to Thin Mints - I’m more of a Trefoils girl myself but to each their own - and I believe deeply in scouting being a positive influence in girls lives, and want to support that as much as I can.

Another woman in the industry shared her experiences working at a tech company, yesterday. Reading it was heartbreaking, because no one should have to be propositioned by people with authority over them. No one should have their career held back because they asked for basic workplace protections. No one should be punished for following the rules. No one should have to balance their love of the thing they do with the toxic environment that surrounds it.

I can’t remember a time when sleep and I didn’t have what my friend would refer to as a “complex relationship”. When I was young, I would wait till my parents went to bed, and turn the light back on and read for another couple hours. As I got older, schoolwork started to be a good excuse to stay up later, although I was still running a morning routine timed to adults with hour-plus commutes.

I really like doing things for other people. My shrink says I’m very empathetic - which can be a bad thing, it turns out - and as a result, making other people happy is a pretty reliable way to give myself a boost, too. I’m just as likely to send a random person a present on a Thursday in June as I am to send an actual Christmas present. It turns out you can be both empathetic, and terrible at gift-giving holidays, who knew?